Setting Strength Goals for Beginners

How to bench press 100kg (if that’s your goal)

Setting strength goals when starting resistance training can be challenging because without training experience to understand your capabilities, it’s hard to set SMART goals or even establish the right timeframe for your goals.

This differs from body composition goals where estimating energy intake and expenditure to quantify timeframes to achieve different outcomes is often part of the goal-setting process.

The biggest mistake you can make is picking a strength goal that utilises an exercise you shouldn’t be doing. For example, many people want to bench press 100kg at some point in the future. They know they can’t do it now, so they set a target of 6 months and aim to start with 40kg and increase by 10kg per month.

While this might work for an intermediate-level trainee, it’s not a good approach for someone starting. Simply trying to lift X plus 10kg each month looks excellent in a spreadsheet, but it often does work out in real life.

I will walk you through how I would take a new client to a 100kg bench press if that were their goal. The objective is to map the process, so don’t worry about the outcome. Benching 100kg or any particular weight might not even be on your radar. However, exercise…